In Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), both crop production and the hidden hunger index (HHI, a combination of zinc, iron, and vitamin A deficiency), continue to be worse than the rest of the world. Currently, 31 out of 36 countries of SSA show the highest HHI. At the same time, several studies show climate change as a major constraint to agriculture productivity and a significant threat to SSA food security without significant action regarding adaptation. The food security of SSA is dependent on a few major crops, with many of them providing largely only an energy source in the diet. To address this, crop diversification and climate-resilient crops that have adaptation to climate change can be used and one route toward this is promoting the cultivation of African orphan (neglected or underutilized) crops. These crops, particularly legumes, have the potential to improve food and nutrition security in SSA due to their cultural linkage with the regional food habits of the communities, nutritionally rich food, untapped genetic diversity, and adaptation to harsh climate conditions and poor marginal soils. Despite the wide distribution of orphan legumes across the landscape of SSA, these important crop species are characterized by low yield and decreasing utilization due in part to a lack of improved varieties and a lack of adequate research attention. Genomic-assisted breeding (GAB) can contribute to developing improved varieties that yield more, have improved resilience, and high nutritional value. The availability of large and diverse collections of germplasm is an essential resource for crop improvement. In the Genetic Resources Center of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, the collections of orphan legumes, particularly the Bambara groundnut, African yambean, and Kersting's groundnut, have been characterized and evaluated for their key traits, and new collections are being undertaken to fill gaps and to widen the genetic diversity available to underpin breeding that can be further utilized with GAB tools to develop faster and cost-effective climate-resilient cultivars with a high nutrition value for SSA farmers. However, a greater investment of resources is required for applying modern breeding to orphan legume crops if their full potential is to be realized.
Exploitation of available germplasms particularly in the developing countries is still limited despite the availability of rich gene pools. Canavalia species are underutilized legumes of wide importance for humans and livestock feed. Field and laboratory studies were carried out on evaluation of variability in proximate compositions within and between fifteen genotypes of Canivalia species collected from Genetic Resources Centre, International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Ibadan. The study was a randomized complete block design replicated three thrice. Harvested mature seeds were analysed for proximate composition. The results revealed that moisture content ranged from 26.97 to 30.05, crude protein 15.45-21.85%, lipid 7.05-29.70%, ash 10.18-17.43%, sugar 0.75-1.37%, starch 7.40-0.26% and energy levels 1016.56-1825.82 kJ 100 g-1 DM. Significant (p<0.05) variability was observed in sugar, lipid and energy contents among the accessions based on analysis of variance (ANOVA). The first principal component analysis (PCA) had the highest contribution of 31.4% to the total variation. Based on proximate composition, the 15 accessions clustered into six main groups. Lipid varied widely and significantly (p<0.05) correlated to energy. Aggregation of accessions within the same species into a cluster revealed high similarity within a biological and taxonomic unit. The similarities among these 15 accessions could allow for inter specific hybridization.
The capability of winged bean to support food and nutrition security in sub-Saharan Africa is recurrently being affected by several constraints, which include a lack of genetic improvement. The dearth of adequate information on the level of available genetic diversity in winged bean germplasm has been a major setback in planning appropriate improvement programs. Fifteen winged bean accessions were assessed for genetic diversity using 10 quantitative traits and 10 simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers. The accessions were laid out in RCBD with three replicates for two growing seasons. Leaf samples were obtained from 10 plants representing each accession for SSR marker genotyping. The accessions exhibited significant (p < 0.05) differences for measured traits. Broad-sense heritability estimates varied from 10.31% for days to first plant maturity to 72.67% for pod weight. Pod weight had a positive and significant correlations with pod length (0.53, p < 0.05), pod width (0.70, p < 0.01), and number of seeds per pod (0.64, p < 0.01). However, the number of seeds per pod was negatively correlated with days to maturity (−0.71, p < 0.01). Number of seeds per pod was positively predicted by pod weight, seed thickness, and days to maturity. Cluster analysis delineated the accessions into two distinct groups. Average number of alleles of 4.2, gene diversity of 0.25, and polymorphic information content of 0.22 were recorded. Analysis of molecular variance revealed intra-accession variation of 95% as compared to inter-accession variation of 5%. Two primary genetic groups were identified and only three accessions, namely TPt-6, TPt-126, and TPt-48, showed genetic purity. The results of this study provide the basis for exploiting the existing diversity for winged bean improvement.
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